(ROME) When in 1978 the
31-year old Afghan Communist politician-activist, Mohammad
Najibullah, arrived in Tehran, “exiled” to neighboring
Iran as Afghanistan’s Ambassador, I had just left Iran where I
had worked throughout the year of 1977. Najibullah’s political
party, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) had
come to power in Kabul in April, 1978 in what is known as the Saur
Revolution, the name of the month in the Afghan calendar when the
Communist Revolution took place. Far from united, the PDPA was
divided into two factions: the more revolutionary faction
(Khalq-People’s) that first took power in Kabul in that crucial
year of 1978 (crucial in both Afghanistan and Iran), preferred to
have the charismatic Najibullah of the Parcham faction (Banner) of
the PDPA far from the halls of power.

Moreover, the entire
country was divided, much of it opposed to the Communist revolution.
The chief resistance forces were the also divided. One might conclude
that the Afghan War was a proxy war, between the USSR and the USA,
the USA to control these two contiguous countries near the top of the
world, Iran and Afghanistan, both bordering the Islamic part of the
Soviet Union; the Soviet Union to defend itself from incursions into
its Islamic republics in Central Asia.

As subsequent history
would show, Najibullah’s approach to resolving the civil war in
Afghanistan was quite different from that of the PDPA faction heading
the government which favored more rapid steps toward the realization
of the socialist revolution. However, for the observer today,
Najibullah’s more political National Reconciliation policy
(which failed) between the government and the Mujahideen opposition
and the clergy is a key to understanding not only contemporary
Afghanistan but also Afghan-Soviet relations in general and the
withdrawal of Soviet troops ordered by Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev in 1989: the significance of the 10-year Soviet military
presence in Afghanistan should not be underestimated.

Since 1979 the 110,000
Soviet troops had guaranteed the relative stability of the Afghan
Communist PDPA government. Though the U.S.-backed Mujahideen
guerrillas already controlled many parts of the country, they were
unable to defeat government forces and dislodge the PDPA government
in Kabul as long as Soviet troops were present. The Soviet leadership
had to know that that stability would quickly break down when its
last soldiers departed.

Things had begun
changing with the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev to power in Moscow in
1986. Though Soviet-controlled Afghanistan was a dangerous place to
be, one of Gorbachev’s gravest mistakes was to pull his troops
out of Afghanistan in 1989, leaving Najibullah and his government to
face the growing firepower of the Mujahideen ... and the threat of
U.S. intervention. The then President Najibullah understood this
quite well and did all in his power to convince Soviet authorities to
leave their troops in place.

IRAN

The
Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran—also in crucial
1978-79—resulted in the overthrow of
the U.S.-supported Pahlavi dynasty at that time under Mohammad Reza
Shah Pahlavi. The Iranian Revolution was a violent and widely popular
overthrow of a ferocious U.S.-inspired regime installed after the
CIA-organized overthrow of the democratically elected government led
by Premier Mohammad Mossadegh on August 19, 1953. The initial success
of the leftist forces in Iran’s Islamic revolution must have
been an inspiration to Najibullah.

The
oil boom in Iran of the 1970s had accelerated the gap between the
rich and poor in both city and provinces. I had never seen such
display of wealth as in the palatial mansions at the top of the city
of Tehran where some the world’s richest people lived and whose
excrements literally trickled down the stinking open sewage ditches
running along the streets downhill to the poorest neighborhoods in
the lower city ... symbolic of the enormous disparity between rich
and poor. To be sure, as has been said time and again, inequality
truly kills. Example: life expectancy in 1970 in pre-revolutionary
Iran was 58%; today, 70%. In neighboring Syria, it was 70% in 1970.
Moreover, adding to the widespread hate for the Shahinshah’s
regime was the presence of tens of thousands of unpopular skilled
foreign workers and foreign entrepreneurs like the one I was
associated with in search of lucrative contracts in fields ranging
from infrastructure construction to heavy industry, mining and even
the production of tiles at which Persians were masters. Most Iranians
were angered by the fact that the Shah's family was the foremost
beneficiary of the income generated by oil so that the line between
state earnings and family earnings blurred. No one should believe
that the last Pahlavi Shah was a benefactor of the Iranian people; he
was a tyrant and, in effect, a U.S. puppet, a key part of U.S.
efforts to control the entire region.

I
was in Tehran during most of 1977 as an interpreter for a newly
formed Italian company before being named its Iranian representative.
Though I understand zilch about the business world I came to love
Iran and its people and considered the proposed job an excellent
short-term opportunity to learn the country. In that capacity I
witnessed some of the demonstrations against the Shah that commenced
in October 1977 since the hotel I lived in was in the lower town near
Tehran University and foreign embassies, the area where major
demonstrations took place. Marxist groups,
primarily the Communist Tudeh Party and Fedaeen guerrillas, had been
weakened considerably by the Shah’s repression. Despite this
the leftist guerrillas played an important role in the final February
1979 overthrow of the Shah, delivering the coup de grace to the U.S.
installed regime. Many of the most powerful guerrilla groups—the
Mujahideen—were leftist but also Islamist even though they
opposed the reactionary influence of the clergy. Together with
armed guerrilla of the People’s Fedaeen, remaining elements of
the Tudeh Party, plus various Islamist groups and the powerful
organization of the Bazaarists, the revolutionary movement developed
from the general unrest in the country, widespread poverty and the
terror of the notorious secret police, SAVAK. As protests grew in
intensity in late 1977 I watched as people surrounded trucks
carrying young army troops some of whom threw down their guns and
jumped down to join the crowds. In other places instead a more
hardened military opened fire and reports circulated of thousands of
victims. At that point the company I was to work for collapsed and
like many foreign entrepreneurs abandoned Iran. I too returned to
Rome from where I tried to follow events in Iran. The revolution
itself emerged from the widespread civil resistance. Between August
and December 1978 strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country.
The Shah left Iran on January 16, 1979. Invited back to Iran by the
transitional government, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was greeted on
his return to Tehran by millions of Iranians. Shortly after, the
royal reign ended definitively when rebels overwhelmed troops loyal
to the exiled Shah, bringing Khomeini to power. Iran voted in a
national referendum to become an Islamic Republic on April 1, 1979.

At
that time I knew little about the events underway in neighboring
Afghanistan. I first became acquainted with the name Najibullah, when
he headed the Communist Party in Kabul in the 1980s. With the support
of the Soviet Union, he became President of Afghanistan in 1987…
by the way the only period in my memory when any semblance of order
existed in chaotic Afghanistan. Dr. Najibullah must have learned much
from the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

KABUL

Though
divided by internal conflict among the tribal peoples and by foreign
intervention for centuries, Afghanistan had made some progress toward
modernization by the 1950s and 60s, toward a more liberal and
westernized lifestyle, but obligated to cater to the conservative
factions. Exotic and Oriental Kabul at that time was an “in”
place for the international elite who frequented Afghanistan to visit
the soaring mountains of the Hindu Kush, the huge central area of
Afghanistan, in a way truly the top of the world. After the
assassination of his father, Mohammad Zahir Shah succeeded to the
throne and reigned (not ruled) as monarch from 1933 to 1973. In 1964,
he had promulgated a liberal constitution that produced few lasting
reforms, but instead permitted the growth of unofficial extremist
parties of both left and right. Because of the turbulence at home,
the king went into exile in Italy in 1973 and lived in the Rome
suburbs near my residence. I tried to get an interview with him but
never got past his secretary-watch dog; he had allegedly survived an
assassination attempt in 1991 so was extremely stingy with
interviews.

Though
officially neutral during the Cold War, Afghanistan was courted by
both the USA and the Soviet Union: machinery and weapons from the
USSR and financial aid from the USA. Progress was halted in the 1970s
by a series of bloody coups and civil wars. One will be surprised
that despite modernization, the average life expectancy for Afghans
born in 1960 was 31.

Dr.
Najib as Najibullah was called because he had a degree in medicine
from Kabul University, became the President of Afghanistan in 1987 at
the age of 40. Born in 1947 in Gardiz, the son of a prominent
Pashtun family, he joined the Parcham faction of the PDPA in 1965 at
the age of 18, became an activist and was twice jailed for his
militancy. His faction of the Communist
PDPA was in disagreement with the Khalq over the proper path to
Communism in Afghanistan, the Khalq favoring more rapid steps toward
the realization of Socialism than the Parcham.

Since
his return from exile in 1980, the longest and most important part of
which was in Moscow, Dr. Najib headed the dreaded Khad,
the secret police, during which time he personally acquired a
reputation for brutality: torture and execution of the opposition was
the norm, as its was in Iran, as in most of the world today. He had
the close support—if not control—of the KGB. His Khad was
modeled on the Soviet Committee of State Security (KGB), was
militarized, grew in size to the point it allegedly had 300,000
troops, and was considered effective in the pacification of wide
parts of the country.

MOSCOW

In
an attempt to give the Afghan story a personal touch, I have added
this curious historical coincidence. I moved to The Netherlands in
1978 where I broke into Dutch journalism with articles about Iran. As
a result of published articles in the press and my stay in Tehran I
somehow became a consultant to a prominent TV producer who at the
time was working on a series of specials on Iran. Since I had studied
Turkish at Munich University and had become interested in the Soviet
Central Asian republics, the former Russian Turkestan, especially
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan which border northern
Afghanistan, I proposed a series of colorful reportages on landmarks
in the Central Asian republics such as Samarkand and Bokhara. So in
late spring of 1978, armed with a stack of Dutch TV credentials I set
out for Moscow. The plan was to interest Soviet television in a
cooperative effort.

I
finally met with a person at the Ostankino TV center and presented
the idea of a cooperative production of Soviet and Dutch television
about Soviet Central Asia. In retrospect I came to understand
that Moscow TV people must have thought I was insane: an American
representing Dutch television proposes a joint TV production about
the vast area bordering with Afghanistan and the Soviet-backed
Communist government in Kabul in a struggle with a U.S.-backed
opposition. Ludicrous. Moreover, and unbeknownst to me, Najibullah
was also present in Moscow lobbying for a Soviet intervention in his
country to bolster the Communist government in Kabul while I was
proposing a TV production about areas between Moscow and Afghanistan.
Soviet TV people were not interested and I instead cut a ridiculous
figure, while Dr. Najib’s contacts were extremely interested in
his proposals and in him personally. His major sponsor was the
powerful KGB, a relationship which lasted until the bitter end of his
life. The documentary series I proposed was about the lands over
which Soviet tanks and armored cars would pass not many months ahead
on their way to Afghanistan, accompanied also by the young Afghan
political figure, Mohammad Najibullah.

KABUL

Once
back in Kabul, Dr. Najib became the director of Khad, the secret
police, which operated under Soviet control. Not only an intelligence
organization, it was a military force. It had tanks, armored vehicles
and helicopters. A state within the state, Khad was charged with both
counter-intelligence activities and intelligence gathering to
eliminate active and potential opponents and counterrevolutionaries.
Dr. Najib might have taken his cue from Felix Dzerzhinsky, the
founder of the Soviet Cheka, the predecessor of the KGB. On how to
combat counter-revolutionaries, Dzerzhinsky said in 1918: “Don’t
think that I seek forms of revolutionary justice; we are not now in
need of justice. It is war now—face to face, a fight to the
finish. Life or death.” That was also the belief of Che Guevara
decades later. And that must have been the guideline for Mohammad
Najibullah, who reigned with an iron fist over Khad from 1980 until
he became head of the party and President of Afghanistan in 1987.

Once
in power, Dr. Najib undertook his National Reconciliation policies.
He eliminated the word Communist and references to Marxism from a new
Constitution in 1990, labeled Afghanistan an Islamic Republic (as in
Iran), introduced a multiparty system, freedom of speech and an
independent judiciary. Yet the Mujahideen—which controlled wide
parts of the country—refused to join in. With U.S. and western
support the fanatical Taleban (religious students) emerged and
conquered the country. When in 1992 they took Kabul, Dr. Najib found
refuge in the United Nations compound where he lived until 1996. On
September 27 the Taleban took Najibullah from his refuge, castrated
him, dragged him behind a car over Kabul streets, finished him with a
gunshot and hung his body from a traffic post.

In
conclusion, some results of the Thirty Years War in Afghanistan are
clear: the USA dream of control of these lands at the top of the
world, in Afghanistan and Iran, was shattered. I tend to think of
Iran and Afghanistan together. Twenty-five years of oppression and
exploitation were too much for Iranians who rose up, made a
revolution, and ousted America. Russia too lost something in Iran
while Ayatollah Khomeini ruled; now that has been overcome and Russia
and Iran are today allies … against aggressive “Yankee”
imperialism. Iran was thus lost to the USA but Afghanistan seemed and
perhaps in the minds of some Neocons continues to be a promising
alternative. No oil but lots of poppies and valuable land and
location. Soviet Russia had dreamed of a Soviet-friendly progressive
Afghanistan to protect and secure its vast Islamic regions extending
from the Caucuses to the Far East. It
failed to quell the ruly, untamable Afghans as Americans cannot still
today. Though U.S.-supported Mujahideen could not defeat in battle
the Soviet-supported government in Kabul in the 1980s, it at least
convinced the Russians to abandon a lost mission and to leave, a
lesson that the USA has continued to learn and unlearn for 16 years.
On the flimsiest of excuses it too invaded indomitable Afghanistan in
2001 after 11 September ... and is still there flailing at windmills,
unable to completely abandon another lost war.

Dr.
Najib is gone. The dream of a Communist Afghanistan is gone. The
Soviet Union itself is gone. But a defeated America still hangs
on in a tiny portion of the complex country of Afghanistan.